Right Time For Aggressive Action Against Purveyors Of Terrorism

April 25, 1995

They dress up in military-style camouflage uniforms, shoulder assault weapons and spend their weekends staging war games in the countrysides of at least 30 states, including Florida.

They are mostly angry white males who cherish their constitutional right to bear arms, passionately distrust Washington and are determined to resist violently what they consider the piecemeal surrender of the United States to a sinister New World Order.

They are the estimated 100,000 members of secretive paramilitary militias similar to the ones being investigated in connection with the April 19 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. In the past, they were dismissed as far-right kooks playing soldier, but the deadly blast indicates their ranks also may include paranoid and alienated individuals bent on waging guerrilla warfare against the federal government.

President Bill Clinton bluntly labeled the explosion "organized, systematic political violence" and vowed to purge the nation of the "dark forces that gave rise to this evil."

Clinton proposed several specific measures that appear to strike an acceptable balance between protecting the public from domestic and foreign terrorists while safeguarding essential civil liberties. The president:

Urged Congress to pass New York Rep. Charles Schumer's Omnibus Antiterrorist Act, which would make planning terrorism a federal crime and would tighten laws against raising money in the U.S. to support terrorism.

-- Will ask Congress for new legislation to create an interagency Domestic Counterterrorism Center led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with increased authority to trace telephone calls and gain access to records of consumer credit agencies, hotels, motels, airlines and other transportation firms.

-- Ordered a review of the vulnerability of all federal facilities and directed Cabinet members and agency heads to improve security immediately.

Clinton put it appropriately Sunday when he said the militias "have a right to say whatever they want. They have a right to keep and bear arms. But they do not have a right to kill innocent Americans. They do not have the right to violate the law."

The Oklahoma City blast shattered for all time Americans' complacency that terrorism is something that happens mainly to foreign people in faroff lands. While it is important to guarantee that the FBI does not abuse its proposed new powers, the time clearly has come for a much more aggressive national response to terrorism.